HERO crushed in Houston as public becomes educated about the impact of “Gender Identity” on sex-segregated areas of public nudity

November 4, 2015

Photo credit: Houston Chronicle

Last night the “LGBT Rights” movement faced its first momentous loss following last summer’s victory in the decades-long fight for equal marriage rights, as Houston’s HERO ordinance was voted out by a stunning 62-38% margin. The ordinance had claimed to offer protection against discrimination for 15 categories: Sex, Race, Color, Ethnicity, National Origin, Age, Familial status, Marital status, Military status, Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation, Genetic information, Gender Identity, Pregnancy, but only two of the categories: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, actually changed anything, as the rest are already covered by national and/or state law.

The sticking point for voters was a simple one: The overbroad legal status of “Gender Identity” contains no specific characteristics whatsoever. That’s right! No specific characteristics. The sole characteristic of individuals protected by the legal status of “Gender Identity” is that the individual chooses to claim that legal status, and they can invoke it or discard it at any time or for any reason. In practice, this means that any individual can escape charges of indecent exposure, trespassing, and voyeurism in sex-segregated spaces of public nudity (toilets, locker rooms) simply by stating their desire to invoke “Gender Identity” status. There is no medical requirement or psychiatric diagnosis or evidence of gender nonconformance required. No transgender “transition” (adoption of sex-stereotyped appearance or behavior) is required. Even the protected status of religious faith requires objective characteristics (evidence of duration, participation in religious services). Not so for “Gender Identity”.

What could possibly go wrong with the introduction of a new protected legal status that has no characteristics but which is designed to eliminate the rights of women and girls to areas in public life segregated from males for our privacy and protection against sexual harassment and predation? What could possibly go wrong? Nothing at all, if you are willing to ignore the ever present gauntlet of sexual violence by men against women and girls of all ages, ethnicities, orientations, and yes, even “identity”, across all cultures throughout recorded history. Nothing at all, if you completely disregard the rights of women and girls to participate equally in public life. Which is what those who lobbied for the HERO ordinance and those who push other “Gender Identity” statutes must do, in order to support them.

The “Gender Identity” movement, under the auspices of the Transgender Rights movement, is the first (so-called) “civil rights” campaign whose success relies on removing the rights of another protected category: Women. This conflict of competing minority rights is based on the transgender philosophy that there is something wrong with being transgender. Rather than lobby for rights and protections for individuals who choose to modify their bodies to look like the other sex, or who believe that humans have distinctly different brain functions based on reproduction (and that they possess the “wrong” type), the transgender lobby demands to be recognized as “cisgender” (their word for people outside the Gender Identity movement).

Houston Press headline

In the wake of the overwhelming failure of Houston’s HERO initiative the men at the helm of the post-equal marriage “LGBT” movement are reacting the only way they can: by continuing to ignore the competing rights of women and girls. They are calling the voters of Houston “haters”, even though they represent the most diverse city in the country who elected a Lesbian mayor for the last three terms. They are calling for more “education” of the public on transgenderism. But that isn’t the problem. No one has a problem with transgenderism. Even the proponents of HERO admit that the measure would have passed easily if it had not sought to remove the equal rights of women and girls. The problem, at least for the Gender Identity movement, is that the general public is now becoming “educated” as to what legal Gender Identity status means to them, and to the women and girls in their lives.

Houston’s Gender Identity advocates did everything right. They did everything that has worked for them in the past:

They attached Gender Identity to the lesbian and gay rights movement.

Gay Blogger Joe Jervis on the woman who received alleged rape threat from HERO supporter

They spent millions more to campaign than their opponents.

They obscured the conflict of interest with women’s rights by embedding Gender Identity in a long list of established rights for minority groups that everybody agrees with.

They tried to pass it as quietly as they could.

They used their political power to squelch the legal rights of the opposition to contest (later overturned by the Texas supreme court).

They threatened to subpoena the sermons of Houston churches (later withdrawn).

They got Hollywood celebrities to do photo-ops in support.

The President of the United States, as well as 2016 candidates Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders stumped for it.

They called opponents “haters” and “bigots” and “anti-gay”.

They threatened to force important national football and social events to boycott the city.

They called women and girls “fear mongerers” who should simply trust men to refrain from ill-behavior.

They denied overwhelming evidence that male predators will use any means necessary to gain access to potential victims.

They ignored the poll numbers and framed the opposition as fringe right-wing Christian zealots.

In short, they did everything right (by the standards and history of the Gender Identity movement). What they failed to realize is that the public is becoming “educated” about the conflict the transgender movement poses to the rights of women and girls. You can see the same story playing out in Illinois, where the largest school district in the Chicago suburbs, District 211, is facing off against the dubious legal authority of the Obama administration’s Department of Education. The school board voted unanimously that opposite-sex students must simply utilize one of the plentiful privacy booths when using opposite-sex locker rooms. The issue arose after two female students complained about a male student undressing in the girl’s locker room. He was previously given the right to use female restrooms and also given a slot on a female sports team. Obama’s DOE has threatened to strip the district of federal funding (which comprises around 2.5% of their annual budget), unless the male student is permitted to freely expose himself and shower openly with the girls, claiming that “Gender Identity” overrides the rights of women and girls. But, no. The mainstream liberal residents in the district overwhelmingly support drawing the line. They’ve reached “Peak Trans”.

The “problem” in Houston and around the country isn’t that people are “bigots” or require “education”. The problem going forth, at least for the Gender Identity movement, is precisely the opposite.

141 Responses to “HERO crushed in Houston as public becomes educated about the impact of “Gender Identity” on sex-segregated areas of public nudity”

I saw this today and literally the very next thing I saw was about a 12 year old girl being raped by a man in the bathroom in Houston. the first comments were: wasn’t this what they said not passing that bill would prevent? and ‘o, the irony’. I personally find it distasteful to use the word irony in any way regarding a 12 year old child being raped but I have given up expecting more from these people.

why can’t they GET that it’s not about it being a magic pill cure to keep rapists or men out of the bathroom, it’s about having the authority legally to ASK THEM TO LEAVE once they’re in there? Why do we now have to wait and see if we’re lucky enough to not get raped? If an adult woman saw that man in the ladies bathroom she could tell him to get the hell out because it’s a clear line: no penis in the ladies room. If this law passed she would have to hold her breath and see what the dude decided to do. It’s not ABOUT prevention, it’s ABOUT reaction.

I think of it as being similar to open carry gun laws. A good number of people are okay with somebody owning guns for hunting and keeping them locked up safely at home. In other words, acting like a considerate neighbor or citizen. They are not so okay with arrogant idiots parading their guns through schools, parks, playgrounds, restaurants, and bars and playing intimidation games. They’re not okay being told that nobody can question why some 19-year-old jackass dude dressed in camouflage and muttering to himself while carrying an AK-47 down the street. They’re not okay being told that the police aren’t interested in hearing about it till the shooting starts. Same situation here. Of course there are men who enter women’s restrooms now. A college where I used to work had at least two reports of a man with a camera in a women’s room, incidents that were reported to campus security. He was never caught. But at least you could report it. With HERO, you have no legal basis for questioning his motives. No legal basis for filing a complaint. No legal basis for having him arrested. Unless, I suppose, you had already caught him taking pictures under the stalls or something. Way too similar to the situation with the gun man. If I see somebody walk into my office building with a shotgun, I want to be able to contact security or the police NOW, not after somebody is laying in a pool of blood. If I see a dude in the ladies room, I also want to keep the option of calling security now. And not waiting to see if he assaults somebody, rapes somebody, or there is actual evidence that he as taken offensive photos or video with his camera.

It’s funny that public understands the concept of “gun free zones” to put people at ease because guns can be used to commit horrible acts of violence, but the concept of “penis free zones” to put women at ease is considered absurd, even though they too can be used to commit horrible acts of violence.

I guess the difference is that former violent act (shooting) is taken seriously and guarded against because it affects men, wheras the latter violent act (rape) isn’t because its victims are mainly women.

It’s about boundaries.Women have a right to privacy and a right to say no – we know declaring this will never stop male violence – but it draws a social and legal line that says women have rights to their boundaries in public – and there will be consequences if you cross this in anyway at all.

I saw this today and literally the very next thing I saw was about a 12 year old girl being raped by a man in the bathroom in Houston. the first comments were: wasn’t this what they said not passing that bill would prevent?

Disgusting! What they’re saying is “You’re being raped anyway, so why not let in more potential rapists?”

And as I said over at STC, this was not a liberal vs conservative issue here in Houston. The pastor of the biggest and whitest Baptist church in town was quite happy to share a Youtube channel with the New Black Panther Party.

Voting against HERO felt like treason to the person I was six months ago. But I started reading GenderTrender six months ago and had to say NO.

I boil with rage when I am told that women have no right to privacy in the women’s bathroom because there is really nothing stopping men from raping us anyway. That is what they are saying to us when they use this shitty argument.

I used to be pretty indifferent to this issue until I kept seeing an increasing number of heterosexual men coming out of the wood works claiming to be lesbians. Previously, my experience with trans was the “self-hating homosexuals.” You can say that I did “get educated” and realized that this is the only so-called civil rights movement that takes away sex-based protections from women so a small group of mostly men can get their sexual fetish on.

Good for Houston for voting against this! Sorry trans, but in the real world you will need to do something other than insult people if you want support. (Also, real classy calling women who are afraid of rape “fear-mongering.” Keep talking, you’re your own worst enemy.)

Interesting how you can be trans one day and then not be trans the other day but for protection based on religion that want you to be committed to your religious beliefs for some time. My special rights and privileges senses are tingling.

“Even the protected status of religious faith requires objective characteristics (evidence of duration, participation in religious services). Not so for “Gender Identity”.” Yes, let that sink in for a few minutes, trans ideology is now not only more important than women’s concerns but it is in a class all by itself, above recognized religions. So, apparently, there is not even an option to declare oneself an atheist when it comes to the church of trans.

Could you be more specific? I fail to see how the repeated threats to myself and others to “drink bleach and die in a fire” for not agreeing with the trans ideology don’t parallel the way major religions, such as the Catholic church, used to treat “uppity”.

Transpolitics is a belief system and a cult. A cult does not allow it’s members freedom of thought (transphobia!). It’s main tenets are to BELIEVE despite all of human history that men are good and will not use gender identity to further abuse women. We are supposed to BELIEVE in nebulous ideas like ladybrain and manbrain that were disproven a long time ago. We are told that NOT believing in this religion is tantamount to being an immoral person. Hello, this sounds a whole heck of lot like Christianity after Paul of Tarsus took it over. Add in the whole “get raped and die in a fire” well that’s exactly what they did to women in the middle ages suspected of not believing in Christianity. Transpolitics are a pro-rape witch hunt, built on the idea that torturing and murdering women is noble and good. Transpolitics are like a well orchestrated troll movement designed to destroy the rights of LGBA, women, and gender non conformists at the same time. It is so toxic, it’s unbelievable. I don’t think even THEY believe they are women, they’re just psychopath men who lie to play the special snowflake card.

@Meg Just so we’re clear here, rape was never a form of torture used or endorsed by the Catholic Church at any point in its history. They used many forms of torture during inquisitions and witch hunts and the like, but rape was never one of them. Remember, in most cultures up until recently rape was not taken seriously and seen as interchangeable with normal sexual intercourse (albeit violent and nonconsensual). The Catholic Church, even in the Dark Ages, would have seen all sex (including rape) as the “sacred right” held only by a husband over his wife, and raping a woman would have violated her husband (or future husband, if she wasn’t married) sacred right to her body. Therefore, the Catholic Church never saw or used rape as an acceprable method of punishment or torture for women.

@tinfoilhattie I’m not defending that ideology, I was just explaining it in the terms that the Catholic Church historically believed. I thought I made it clear that marital rape IS (as you say) “rape-rape” when I pointed out that (as disgusting as it is) historically sex and rape were seen by men as the same thing — marital rape included.

Also, until perhaps the last hundred years or so nearly *every* marriage in *every* country, culture and religion forced women to endure marital rape, since the dawn of humanity. It wasn’t a tool invented by the Catholic Church to “punish” women, it was the sad fact of life for almost all women throughout history, whether secular, monotheistic, or pagan — all cultures are guilty of it.

But on a more serious note, yes…it was absolutely a piss-poor ordinance and I would have expected more out of Annise and her staff. Unfortunately, she was outgoing due to term limits and decided to molly-coddle the tranny brigade, thus dooming every other group that was actually an easily determined demographic named in the proposed Ordinance.

Other concerns however were legitimate as they related to veteran’s preferences which could actually have been made illegal under the Ordinance plus a host of other concerns that the whacktivists didn’t care about fixing before putting it to a vote.

He based that story off of a real life experience where the author and his friend saw a young woman being raped. Instead of helping her, the author and his friend watched until it was over and then asked the girl if she was alright. When she rightly told them to fuck off, the author used her real life pain as a basis for that story. A man making money off a woman’s suffering; really makes you think.

So damn creepy and upsetting. We are supposed to pretend that men who want to become women never hate us. I know, not all of them have these feelings, but the current strain of trans (with their big ole umbrella) have a lot in common with the MRA movement. But we women are told to ignore this.

Yikes! Another detail I noticed was about the woman who escaped. I wonder how seriously they police took her attack and how hard they tried to find the guy, before he killed another woman? I probably don’t want to know.

I also thought this was a nice touch at the head of the article:

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2007)*

Mustn’t libel the nice, male, MTT-wannabe serial killer. At least, I can’t think of what other living person they might be talking about.

*I tried to do a capture of the warning box, but I couldn’t figure out how to post it in this comment. You really need to see it to get the full impact; there is an orange highlight bar and a cute little orange exclamation point!

According to wikipedia, in Texas there is “is no statewide law banning anti-LGBT discrimination” and that gays and lesbians rely on local ordinances for any protections against things such as being refused housing or fired due to their sexual orientation. What rights are now being denied gays and lesbians and trans people due to this insistence that the dubious “right” of people of the opposite sex to demand access to public sex segregated spaces including public spaces where nudity can be expected, aka gender identity protections, has been grafted onto non discrimination ordinances?

One common denominator in transpolitics is that they know they are holding back the rights of other groups, namely LGB and women. They just don’t care. They should stop calling themselves activists because clearly they are batting for the Patriarchy. Most of the time I even wonder if transactivists are trans at all. Everything they do resembles antifeminist and abusive men’s tactics to control women and girls and are extremely homophobic on top of that.

yeah, there were a lot of steps on the way to peak trans for me and one of them was noticing that both MRAs and trans activists were suing and shutting down (or attempting to) women’s shelters and rape crisis centers for excluding males. Trans rights is penis rights as Gallus rightly says.

It is correct that there is no statewide protection in place. Indeed, the Penal Code still has the sodomy statute in place more than a decade after being struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The reality is that few places show ill-will towards gays and lesbians with respect to accommodations, to include the access to loved ones in the hospitals. And in the wake of same-sex marriage, the issues that follow the death of a partner should effectively go by the wayside with some local courts ORDERING death certificates to be amended to reflect the relationship.

The tranny brigade simply does not care about the harm done to women by their insistent demands that ‘identity’ be placed into law which then codifies gender stereotypes. They would do better to focus on their specific needs and seek to have legislation passed related to their purported issues with employment whereby they claim they get fired for appearing in a non-traditional-masculine manner (ie. males in a dress with make-up or nail polish).

closest that you would get is a break-down by exit polls…actual votes are not supposed to be able to be linked to a specific voter (although with the computerized voting booths, the conspiracy theorist in me suggests that they COULD get that information if they wanted to get a break-down like that).

Nicely written. I wanted to point out something I’ve been noticing the past week in the comments at the NY Times.

(1) We had the Feds in Illinois say that a male boy had a right to use the girl’s changing room/showers/etc. The school had made an accommodation for the trans student – she could use a private shower/changing room. But that wasn’t enough. The comments section was filled with people decrying that decision. Basically saying that the Feds has screwed up and they wouldn’t want their 13-year old girl to have to shower with a boy with a penis. I just can’t type ‘girl with a penis.’ Well, I guess I can but it looks just as stupid as when the trans brigade types it.

(2) We had the Houston decision which you’ve written so eloquently about. Almost the same kind of decision, right? Instead, this time the comments section is overrun with people talking about how awful Houston is, threatening boycotts, etc. But it is predominantly the LGB part of the equation (as with JoeMyGod who you site above) who are decrying the vote.

When isolated, as in (1) above, everyone seems to be on board the common sense train. When the trans community is able to tag onto the LGB (as in 2), they get a lot of vocal support.

I keep reminding my fellow gay men that trans men are NOT our allies. That they are by and large autogynephile straight men who are often very hostile to gay rights (see Bruce Jenner for example). I hope that eventual gay men catch on and we eject these perverts from the movement. Of course this doesn’t really help you much since gay men have been poor allies to lesbians, but that’s a whole different subject.

The trans movement can’t get anywhere without latching onto lesbian and gay movements and that’s all there is to it. From my experience, most heterosexuals who aren’t super politically involved view trans as just another form of being gay and think that trans rights=gay rights. There was an op-ed about the first transgender (dude impersonating a woman) judge about how the trans cult latched onto LGB movements and declared that there would be no LGB rights without trans rights. The language they used was the kind you’d use to describe a parasitic relationship too.

“We realized that we should have a parallel movement, but also needed to be dug into the LGBT movement,” said Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. The folks I work most closely with are all very nice, sweet people, but we had to be such hard asses. At a certain point, we said, ‘No more moving gay people ahead without trans people.”

The NY Times piece is an article, not an op-ed. It is a must-read. Made my blood boil. And that quote says it all. It’s a public admission of parasitism. We have our own movement just for us but then we dug ourselves into the gay movement and then “at a certain point” (i.e. after we are already dug in), we tell them that they will make no more progress unless it benefits us. Meanwhile, we still have our trans-only movement, so our progress may proceed unimpeded by any concern for LGBs. In other words “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is ours.”

Excellent comment gaydude50, and I hate to nitpick on a minor point, but do you mean that you remind fellow gay men that trans women are not our allies? Trans men may not be allies, either, and they aren’t really men, but in many respects there seems to be a whole different kind of thing going on there. I’ve come to find the terminology of MTT and FTT used here and elsewhere to be very useful in reframing and avoiding confusion.

Thanks for commenting. I don’t really have an opinion about trans men. I wouldn’t fuck them so I guess I am transphobic, right? Isn’t that how it goes? If it applies to lesbians who think women with penises aren’t women, I should be called out on it.

Gallus, this is a truly excellent post. Thank you. Regarding the case in Illinois, I think it’s only a matter of time before one of these bathroom cases makes it to the Supreme Court, and I am not optimistic about the outcome. It was pretty stunning in the NY Times story to see Catherine Lhamon (Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights) refer to the male in question as “female.” “…the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls’ locker room.”

This seems to be the next phase in Newspeak brainwashing. It’s not enough to say “trans women are women.” Now they get to be biological females. Orwell must be tossing and turning right about now.

If by “not optimistic” you mean you worry SCOTUS will rule in favor of the Obama administration, I think that’s unlikely to happen. There are two things the conservatives on the court love to do: Follow the law extremely closely with little wiggle room for favorable interpretation; Stomp on liberal hopes and dreams. Title IX protects sex, not gender.

You may be right. OTOH, I think the current SCOTUS is extremely unpredictable and dangerous on a lot of issues. If the four “liberals” voted in such a case favorably to trans, they would only need one more case. Kennedy swings wildly back and forth, and might just decide to take the “liberal” path. The other four are just vicious, rightwing loons. One or more of them might vote with the trans position just to blow shit up and provoke a reaction. “Here’s what you wanted you libtards, now see, you’ve got it! Blame Obama!” Scary times.

Well, at least one federal judge has made it clear he understands the difference between the two and rule unequivocally that Title IX is about sex, not gender. If this court stays their usual course of being strict constructionists this shouldn’t be an issue, especially since some of the hardliners are champing at the bit to give Obama a loss.

I agree with Kesher. I look forward to the Illinois case going to SCOTUS because I am confident of a win. If they take the case, they will look first at the language of the statute and, if that is ambiguous, they will turn to the legislative history. The statute clearly says sex, not gender. And the legislative history – obviously – says absolutely nothing about gender, transgender, or cross-sex bathroom usage.

So I can’t see SCOTUS ruling for the trans activists. However, it is possible that this case may nevertheless wind up hurting women even if the trans activists lose. In arguing that the Civil Rights Act covers “gender” the trans activists have cited some lower court cases in which employers tried to force women to conform to sex stereotypes. For example, in one case, a woman was denied a promotion because she did not look “feminine” or “pretty.” In that case, the court held that forcing the woman to conform to stereotypes was a form of sex discrimination. The trans activists latched onto these cases to claim that the law is really about gender So it’s possible that SCOTUS could reject the trans activists’ arguments and, in so doing, wipe out the earlier cases that protected “butch” or less conventionally feminine women from discrimination. Whether butch women become collateral damage will depend upon how the final opinion is worded.

Being trans involves replacing that person’s endogenous hormones with synthetic hormones they have to pay for for the rest of their lives. Trans is as much a pharmaceutical cash cow as it is a pervert’s paradise.

The USSC almost certainly would not support the trans not only because of the fact Title IX has nothing to do with crossdressing “rights” but also the fact there is what is known as a “compelling public interest” in having sex-segregated spaces. This is not even remotely the same as race-segregated facilities. Rape and sexual harassment are very real threats, and while they can happen now, at least women have recourse if a man violates their public spaces. The trans seek to leave all women vulnerable to sexual assault just so the vast majority of the can get the sexual kink on.

Even FOX newscasters called that dude a “woman”. Not a transwoman, but a woman. If you had just tuned in, you would have thought people were loosing their shit over an actual female using the girls’ locker room.
If transactivists were going for confusion — well, mission accomplished. They got the conservative assholes singing their song.

You know it’s so ridiculous. Cross dressers, males who fetishize wearing women’s clothing (many of which commit multitudes of crime while doing so) have a “gender identity”. Why doesn’t anyone ever ask “what about cross dressers?” The public knows this is a sexual fetish, but I believe they draw a line between the two if they haven’t thought critically about it. They don’t know the two are on the same side of the line when it comes to nebulous gender identity. Of course what is an autogynephile but a full time cross dresser, but for simplicitys sale let’s start off with the part time cross dressing that most people realize is a sexual fetish. Does anyone ask other than us?

In the old days there was a difference between the transsexuals and the transvestites, but now there is so much overlapping it is really a distinction without any meaningful difference. “Gender identity” is merely code for the dubious “right” to crossdress.

I remember those differences. I find it more honest for a man to just admit he’s a cross dresser rather than try to justify it through “ladybrain” bullshit. I have to wonder if there’s a psychological continuum between cross dressing and gender identity, where if a man LARPS ladyhood long enough, he starts to believe the fantasy?

The same people who would tell me to trust men are the same ones who would tell me I should have “known better” to be in the same proximity as a man if he chooses to rape me. Transpolitics would like nothing better than to pass laws allowing men into bathrooms so they can later tell women and girls that they “should have known” there was a risk of rape using a public restroom that men are allowed to use. Gender identity is a pro-rape poison pill and should never be attached to feminist or LGB legislation.

Here is a petition asking organizations such as HRC, GLAAD, Lambda Legal and media outlets such as The Advocate, Out Magazine, HuffPost Gay Voices, etc., to dissassociate from the transgender movement.

If they ditch the T, then they’ll lose much of their reason for being. Seems like most of those groups don’t do any LGB activism anymore; it’s all trans all the time. If the LGB wants to ditch the T, stop giving those organizations money. That’s what the likes of HRC listens to.

Nov 6, 2015 — GLAAD stands firmly with the transgender community and unequivocally rejects the outrageous and destructive idea that the ‘T’ be removed from LGBT. For decades, transgender people have worked alongside lesbian, gay, and bisexual people to advance equality for everyone, often leading the way in the movement for full equality and acceptance. Many trans people are also lesbian, gay, and bisexual — they are an inextricable and invaluable part of the LGB community. At a time when anti-LGBT activists continue to attack the basic rights and protections essential to all of our lives, we must stand together, rather than succumb to the ruin of divisiveness.

Sickening, but not surprising. LGBs once again pay the highest price for trans activism. And we won’t get so much as a “thank you” from these trans activists. Not one trans activist will feel the need to post something like “LGBs, I can’t tell you how awful I feel today. You did this for us and we won’t ever forget. We’ll find a way to repay you.” Trans activism never says thank you. Instead, they are online griping about how the campaign was badly run. This would be the same campaign to which they donated no money and volunteered no time. They are truly parasitic.

Regarding the post: I love it and agree with all of it, except for 1 point. There is no question that the leaders of No on 1 are hardcore antigay bigots. It is a coalition dominated by extreme right wing evangelical Christians. Saying anything nice about the opposition leaders will only give the trans activists an opening to paint you as “right wing.” This is a tactic that they love, trying to put “radfems” on the same side as right wing Christianity. I would steer clear of saying anything complimentary about the leaders. It might be more effective to equate the anti-gay leaders of No on 1 with trans activists. Both are antigay, believe in fantasies, and are fanatics.

Certainly not in Houston. The campaign against the proposition never mentioned anything about religion or homosexuality, that I recall. Average people were terrified of those commercials, despite the activists and leftists position that there was nothing to worry about.

In Houston, that is CERTAINLY clear…after all, they had arguably their SECOND lesbian mayor and definitely the first KNOWN lesbian as a mayor. Kathy Whitmire was long suspected of having been gay and got elected with a lot of help from the gay and lesbian community back in her day…

And Texas as a collective whole has shown a tendency to overlook sexual orientation in who they vote into office. Multiple District Clerks are gay males and there are multiple elected Sheriff’s in this State that have been lesbian (including Margo Frasier in Travis County twenty or so years ago and who served multiple terms in the office).

Those that got elected did so with something other than an agenda based upon identity…being gay or lesbian was just WHO they were, not WHAT they wanted to do in office and with their office.

Absolutely, I agree 100%. I was only referring to the leadership of No on 1. Definitely not the voters as a whole. If this had been a sexual orientation bill, we would have won. Instead, we not only walk away with nothing, but we are actually worse off than if the issue had never been raised at all. Because now we are seen as weak and anti-discrimination is seen as unpopular. So Houston is unlikely to want to touch this again for years.

The far right would have led on the no vote regardless if it included a clause for penis rights. But the difference is keeping penis out of women’s spaces is something that even moderates and liberals care about. Had trans access to women’s spaces not been included, the measure would have passed in a landslide.

It’s true that the right-wingers are please with the outcome and are out in force commenting on blogs about this, but they’re not the only ones by far. I’m a regular of the Esquire politics blog by Charles Pierce — yeah, I know, the site is mostly a sexist cesspool, but Pierce is usually great.

Once in a while, there is a post by someone else in there, as was the case with this piece on Tuesday. It’s a crappy post, major logic fail this is a good ordinance because my dead brother was gay. I mean, the guy loved his brother obviously and some of that is touching, but it has nothing to do with the Houston ordinance.

Anyway, the comments have a lot of pushback. Some of them are awful and bigoted, but some are really good (including some from a regular commenter here, yay!). I’m kind of nervous about posting any, as the comment system is Facebook and you have to use your real name. Some of the stalwart, regular, “liberal” commenters, alas, are confused about this.

I’m all for people getting the message and getting to peak trans awareness, but I fear that “liberals” will be the last to get it and the whole thing will blow up and put a lot of other, worthwhile liberal stuff at risk in the reaction.

The interesting thing about big cities, even in the South, is that they tend to be bastions of liberalism (to the point that it’s an ongoing joke in the US). So for 60+ percent of liberal city-dwellers to vote against an *entire* non-discrimination ordinance to get rid of some creepy people in the women’s room…to me, this reads a lot like how some commenters here described the Lila Perry debacle. That many people saying no in an area that’s supposed to be lefty as hell means that the squawking about how nobody’s safety is in danger doesn’t sit right with me. What kind of creeps, I wonder, are faffing around in Houston to make so many people wary?

Carlotta S, the Planet Fitness pervert, is a consultant to a business here in Houston and according to his Fetlife page, he attends fetish parties here regularly. Maybe he’s to blame?

But I have to say Houston has been totally a gay friendly city since Kathy Whitmire, the model for Dustin Hoffman’s Tootsie, rose to power backed by a unified GL movement in the early 80’s. In 1985 Whitmire and the Council passed a gay and lesbian non-discrimination law. This law was put to a referendum by a petition drive and lost, but Whitmire and most of the incumbent council were re-elected.

And it’s the same today. The bill lost, but most of the members who supported it are back in office. Annise Parker is term limited out, but Turner, a bill backer,s has a huge lead going into the runoff. Bill King is runner up and will lose in the Saturday possee runoff. Yeah, us Hostonians are snobs. We will never turn out for a former mayor of Kemah and all the Adrian Garcia backers will either stay home or vote for Turner.

The entire bathroom issue is really where a lot of the gaslighting comes in. Up until relatively recently I would have assumed any “manly” person in the ladies’ room is a butch woman. Now these men are creating an environment where women will question every individual in a space that has been sex-segregated for our entire lives. Hey, maybe the guy with giant man hands is one of the good trannies! The trans agenda is forcing women to roll the dice with our lives, dignity and safety in YET ANOTHER space meant for our sex only. And feign shock and dismay with our anger about this. As though WE’RE the crazy ones.

Hi ericacantin: What you describe is exactly what’s happening to a born-woman I know. She’s nearly 6’4, played NCAA basketball and is definitely a woman; she gave birth to her children, etc. She’s noticing that women are looking at her with some fear in bathrooms lately.

Even if mistaken at first glance it’s very easy to tell the difference. Not just hands, face, voice as soon as but the whole attitude is different.

I almost always get funny looks, and it is annoying and I shouldn’t have to, but if someone looks at all worried I will just smile or say Hi, and then you can see them relax straight away (even if they don’t approve of my failure to be properly feminine they know I am not a threat at all)

The voice is a dead giveaway. MTTs can try all they want to sound feminine, but their fake voices will never sound as real as a woman who’s not trying.

The voice is also a giveaway in the other direction. When I see a woman who’s extremely butch, I start to wonder if she’s transitioning, and, if I have a chance to hear her voice, that tends to alleviate my concern.

It’s SO TRUE. I’m a female, nearly 6 feet tall and broad-shouldered, big-featured, have some facial hair, etc. Every time I go into a public bathroom, especially in a bar or at University, I do a quiet little “absent-minded” sing-song so women can hear my female voice. (I’m so fortunate that my run-ins with taking testosterone didn’t take it from me.) And it is only to reassure them that I’m not a boundary violating creepo.

Thanks for your excellent reporting here, Gallus. Now I can link people to this post who do not understand the HERO thing or what is going on in Houston. And that headline you posted from Houston Press… Wow, not biased at all. So much for objectivity in journalism! It is not that the people have real concerns about letting men who “identify” as women into all women’s spaces… It is that Houstonians are victims of FEAR and voted for discrimination! SMDH… so depressing.

I was hoping you’d weigh in on this Gallus. It seems pretty significant. Guess that “transgender tipping point” looks a little different than expected. “Oh, the irony.” No, the Christian fundamentalists are not 60% of the people in Houston or anywhere else. They are a relatively small persistent group, highly dedicated in their own twisted way, who get an inordinate amount of airtime. Kind of like the trans activists. I’ve noticed that when Christian fundamentalists like Pat Robertson endorse transgenderism that’s never a cause for re-thinking things, but when the fundies and the feminists find themselves on the same side of an issue of course the feminists are like the fundies. As for people who react to the rape of a child in a women’s bathroom by saying that means we should let more males into the women’s bathroom (comment on thread above), of course there’s no way to reach someone that misogynistic. But when ordinary people hear this kind of reaction they start to question the motivations of the trans groups. Trans activists are right about one thing: it’s all about education.

A man is butthurt that a woman ran for her safety because she was walking home alone and he was walking quickly behind her. So not only does this guy not sympathize that this poor woman felt she had to run because a large man was walking briskly behind her at night because of a series of rapes in the area made her afraid, he has taken umbrage at her survival instincts because it hurted his considerate good guy feelings. Gaww, what more can he do, stupid women, relax!! What’s the difference between Brynn and this dude? Nothing at all. It seems most men, in dresses or not, just want women to lay down so they can walk all over us, because men’s feelings.

transactivists could easily lobby for single stall or family restrooms so EVERYONE has the option of privacy. But no, that’s too sane and simple. They must force people into gender straightjackets, erase same sex orientation, and remove the protection sex segregation gives women and girls.

Women have historically fought for their own bathrooms/toilets. Women around the world are still fighting for them. Hey “feminists” and lefty bros, tell us again why we women are not entitled to our own spaces:

This is just the latest example of overreaching privileges for transfolk tanking reasonable protections for other minorities – namely gays and lebsians.

Trans activists also prevented the passage of a Federal non-discriminate law (ENDA) because it didn’t include these unworkable trans privileges.

As a gay man, I’m tired of being shackled to the trans movement. I believe in free expression, but I find the transgender ideology to be sexist and homophobic. It reinforces destructive gender stereotypes that have taken decades to fight and which harm everyone, but especially women and gay men.

I have no problem whatsoever with biological men or women presenting themselves in whatever manner they desire. You can be born with a penis and enjoy wearing dresses, have long hair in curls, like cooking, wear high-heels and makeup – whatever. However, don’t tell me it’s because you have a “female brain.” That’s an inherently dangerous and offensive concept to me. You have a human brain.

Despite attempts to rework the trans ideology so that it’s about “gender variance” or a spectrum. Most trans people -and especially transmen- are critical of anyone who doesn’t conform to rigid gender stereotypes. Everything they do has to be couched in their womanliness or manliness. Trans folks deride sissy boys and tomgirls as being failures.

The more I’ve interacted with trans people and read about trans behavior, I can only conclude that most trans people have a very unhealthy obsession with gender and a pathologic need for attention and validation. None of it seems healthy or positive, and their happiness hinges entirely on how others view them. This is not something society should be enabling.

I’m for less gender rigidity, not people altering their bodies to fit into these gender roles.

[…] laws (meaning anyone could claim the gender identity of woman and be allowed in the women’s room) was defeated using videos like this one to state what the impact of the bill would really be. Check out the […]

I actually discussed this with a co-worker on accident. Now I love this person, but she is eyeballs deep in queer bullshit and that…can be hard. I related a story about how I was performing drag in high school and apparently, I was so good at passing as male th at I scared some classmate out of the girl’s room (without meaning to, of course). She then went on a spiel about how angry that made her, about the evils of gender policing in bathrooms, and how in her opinion, ALL bathrooms should be gender neutral. I countered that gender neutral bathrooms should be available, but that we should maintain sex-segregated spaces for people that prefer them. I mentioned the importance of free association for one and also the need to avoid predation, namely by men. She reluctantly agreed, but states that transwomen should still be able to access women’s bathrooms because it should be obvious who is a predator and who isn’t and that we can just avoid predators once we sit them. (Never got a straight answer as to how we’re supposed to know for sure who is a predator and, once a predator is spotted, how we are to avoid them when trapped in a small enclosed space. She did, however, mention that should we encounter a predator, someone should be able to hear signs of a struggle and rescue you in time. So she basically thinks we should wait to be attacked and hope that someone is around to hear and protect us. Nice.) Eventually she conceded that she GUESSES women should be able to have their own spaces because “women are bitches” to transwomen anyway. Yes…the danger here is that women will be “bitches” to transwomen…Not that actual women will be violently assaulted or violated by male predators. Nope..getting looks or being misgendered is the salient concern here. Uh huh.

Then she invited me to ponder how hard it must be to not be able to go anywhere because you can’t use the bathroom. Cry me a fucking river.

“She reluctantly agreed, but states that transwomen should still be able to access women’s bathrooms because it should be obvious who is a predator and who isn’t and that we can just avoid predators once we sit them.”

I predict that if a horrible crime happens in her neighborhood, she’ll be the first one to say that that the perp was “such a nice guy” and how “shocked” she is that he had done something so horrible.

I’m so tired of people who think women and girls should “know better” who their attacker is going to be. The fact that rapes happen by acquaintances and people women and girls trust shows how oblivious she is to her own lived reality. There is also stranger danger by violent opportunists, men who carry cell phones to record their horrible crimes, and the women who keep saying “not my nigel.” They are all threats to women’s safety, IMO, even if they are women.

One thing I was thinking – maybe Houston losing some giant sporting events will be a respite for poor and marginalized women and children as those spectacles are a hotbed for…wait for it… creepy fucking perverted MALE sex tourists! “Hey, let’s go to the Superbowl and get our pedophilia on” is an actual activity.

Poor things. They really don’t understand sports at all if they really think the NFL or the NCAA is going to leave the #4 market in the country over this. And this notion that Houston is some type of Bubba Backwater is specious as hell. Houston is basically New Orleans West and far more liberal than Atlanta which is supposed to be some type of gay paradise.

After being called multiple times by trannies an “uneducated bigotted cunt” for not being part of their delusion, I would’ve thought these pigs in wigs would know better what SEX-segregated spaces mean. Because, you know, they claim to be “women” while being born male by pointing out how sex =/= gender.

Bathrooms and locker rooms are sex-segregated spaces and not “gender identity” segregated, right? Then what’s their deal crying for access if they supposedly understand the differences between sex and gender? Are they saying sex and gender are the same thing now?
If something like this ever gets approved, will they introduce to anatomy books and legalize the term “female penis”?

These Jim Crow comparisons have got to stop. The NYT has gone too far. I read a thought-provoking blog post describing transgenderism as a white supremacist movement and she had some strong points. The black gay male “acceptable” face of the movement (Cox, Mock, TWOC, etc) is based on a demasculinization of the spectre of the “angry black man” to make him palatable to white society.

THERE IS NO COMPARISON BETWEEN RACISM IN THIS COUNTRY AND “TRANSPHOBIA.”

Race-segregated was based on discrimination and dehumanization by the powerful. Well-documented, centuries old evidence of men attacking, abducting, raping and mutilating women, often unpunished due to their numbers and power in society, is the reason for sex-segregation in places of public nudity and vulnerability. (And yes, I am vulnerable when I’m changing my tampon with my jeans tying my feet together).

I’ve never heard black people say it should be a hate crime to say they are not white, or insist that they should be referred to as white.

Black people do not fight for rights whining, “Stop making us kill ourselves!”
They say, “Stop killing us.”

The NYT can suck a fart. It’s an abusers mindset to believe that threats of suicide should result in getting their way. Domestic abusers do this all the time to women, as a way to keep victims tethered to them and submit to their demands.

“Yeah I have mixed feelings about using this approach to wake people up. It relies on a stereotype. He is a trans man. We know that but if we didn’t know…This person could be a woman with a beard. Womanhood is complex. It’s for each individual woman to decide what it means. Some women have beards just like some of us have a penis”

And “we must be careful that we don’t reinforce stereotypes that will especially harm trans women who don’t pass either by choice or not”

Thank you so much for this, Gallus Mag. It has been horrible to hear the media saying this is about “LGBT” rights, when it’s the opposite of rights for Lesbians and we end up being associated with these disgusting men. That logo is fantastic and says it all.

All the facebook groups I moderate are safe space for women to discuss the trans cult, but one of the liberal ones I was made moderator without asking occasionally a het woman will post referring to the “LBGT” community, so I tell her we never joined with our oppressors. That is against our will.

I live in Houston and, as a woman who understands that RAPE IS A THING, I voted that nonsense down. It’s amazing how other women I know voted “yes” and encouraged others to vote “yes” as if they had no idea that RAPE IS A THING and they could see absolutely no negative outcome in giving all men unrestricted access to womens-only spaces where women are arguably at their most vulnerable.

Must be nice to live in a fantasy world where no man anywhere has ever committed an act of sexual violence against a woman.

Of course, the backlash has been insane, with women like me being lumped into the “right-wing bigot” category. But politics and religion had nothing to do with my vote: As a survivor of sexual violence myself, I’m particularly sensitive to the need for women to be kept safe and to feel safe from the fear of predatory men. Even if the physical threat is minimal due to allowing “trans women” into women’s restrooms, the fear it will trigger (and no doubt has triggered) in rape survivors is cruel enough. There’s no need for a survivor of sexual violence to have to relive her rape every time she enters a public restroom and finds biologically male “trans-woman” inside; She shouldn’t have to be forced into a situation where she is left guessing as to whether or not the person in the stall next to her truly is “a woman inside” or if he is a rapist taking advantage of the law to stalk new hunting grounds he previously couldn’t access.

I can’t for the life of me understand why the feelings of a very small minority are considered more important than the physical safety of half the population. The idea that it’s somehow “okay” to put women in danger for the sake of the feelings of a handful of people who were born men sounds like the very definition of misogyny to me.

(I also don’t appreciate all the victim-blaming by the media and the HERO supporters…If “rape culture” exists, why are we suddenly being forced to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t in this case?)

Understanding how the minds of most sexual predators work is also part of it. A predatory man who already ignores women’s boundaries will look at these kinds of “bathroom ordinances” as a form of validation — permission from society to ignore them. They will see it as being given new stalking ground on a silver platter AND a handy excuse for when they are caught (the “I’m-a-woman-inside-officer-so-anything-I-said-or-did-to-that-woman-was-totally-not-harrassment-or-assault-honest!” excuse). Like most people, I could care less if a legit “trans woman” uses our facilities…its those other men, the predatory men who will inevitably take advantage of these ordinances who I worry about. And take advantage of them they will.

I’m all for tolerance and compassion, but Prop 1 was not a tolerance issue in my mind, as its proponents would have you believe — it was a safety issue. And the second rape stops being “a thing”, then and ONLY then will I implicitly trust biological men (however trans they may be) in women’s-only spaces.

Something I got to thinking about as I went back over the Ordinance…it has language about non-discrimination based upon genetic information.

If the tranny brigade truly believed that trans was a genetic condition, then EVERY statute, code or ordinance that addresses genetic information protections would ALREADY have protected them. The fact that they insist on codifying ‘gender identity’ says they do not even believe their own bullshit…

Time to turn the tables on them yet again since it would seem to be yet another avenue to make them crawfish on their claims…

Slightly off topic, but very relevant to this discussion. I’m an avid follower of Catholic media and one of my favorites (usually, with some exceptions) is Regina Magazine. They posted an article on their Facebook feed about Obama’s threat to schools: Admit men into women’s facilities or lose funding. I have good news and bad news about this:

Aaaaand right on schedule, Michigan LGBT organizations are forming a circular firing squad, pushing to put marriage equality on the ballot and insisting on including the poison pill of trans gender identity nonsense, which will inevitably tank and set gay rights back 20 years:

Cue the butthurt queers. There is a meme circulating Facebook as we speak that offers us the following, unsourced, likely made up statistic: More US senators have been arrested for sexual misconduct in bathrooms than transwomen. It was started by a likely cock-in-frock Red Durkin.
I have two responses:

Stranger abduction is rare compared to family, usually custody-related, and acquaintance kidnappings. Schools still require everyone to stop at the office, verify their ID and their purpose, and get a visitor’s badge. That way, schools have an idea who is on the premises and why and keep an eye on them. If anyone that’s not student or staff is on the grounds without a badge, we can ask them to get one or leave, or call the cops if they don’t. An unwillingness to announce your ID and purpose and get the badge is also a pretty good indicator of bad intentions. It makes s ask, what are you hiding?

Well, since people known to the child are more a danger statistically than strangers, why not just let strangers be and require badges of family and friends. Maybe because, in spite of statistics, most family and friends are safe and, unlike strangers, are easily ID’d as family and friends with legitimate business being at a school.

Lastly, I am childless but several of my friends have children that are known to me. I may occasionally be asked to pick kids up from school or daycare. Well, guess what, not only do I need a visit to the office and a badge, I need written permission from the parents to pick up their child and I need to prove to the school that I am, in fact, the approved adult. I’m not going to “identify” as a relative and be insulted when the school misrelates me. Then again, I’m not a special snowflake tranny either.

Oh, and by the way, I’m Roman Catholic and sometimes need to leave early/come late to observe holy days of obligation and religious feasts. Guess what…I have to ask permission first and prove that that is, in fact, what I’m doing and I still might not get permission if my absence will create an undue burden on management and staff. And you know what? I come in and work my scheduled shift without complaint. Why do transactivists get a level of deference that the rest of us have to beg for?

“Understanding how the minds of most sexual predators work is also part of it. A predatory man who already ignores women’s boundaries will look at these kinds of “bathroom ordinances” as a form of validation — permission from society to ignore them”

The sexual predator Christopher, “Jessica”, Hambrook identified as transgender just long enough to gain access to two different women’s homeless shelters where he sexually assaulted homeless women. Imagine the terror that these homeless women felt. Homeless women are often victims of domestic violence, or are raped while living on the street. Trans activists say that Hambrook doesn’t count because he really wasn’t transgender. It’s moot because at the time he was assaulting women in homeless shelters he called himself “Jessica” and said he was transgender. If he wasn’t allowed in the women’s homeless shelters, trans activists would have sued.

I think most women are too afraid to speak out for fear of being branded a “bigot”. To me, it’s just another way of telling girls and women that any and everything in the world is more important than our needs.

What I’m going to say has been covered on this blog and other websites before, but it’s worth mentioning again for any new readers. I see this as statistics and probability. The more that biological males have access to women’s restrooms, locker rooms, showers, women’s homeless shelters, etc. sooner or later there will be another Hambrook, Mr. Colleen Francis, or Mr. Carlotta Sklodowska incident. It’s just a matter of time. We know three things.

(1.) There are far more male registered sex offenders than female sex offenders. Look at the crime statistics.
(2.) Most violent crime is committed by males. How many school shootings were committed by female students?
(3.) Paraphilias such as voyeurism are more common in males. If people aren’t sure what paraphilias are, below are a few examples.

Cross-dressing Russell Williams, a highly decorated Canadian Air Force colonel, was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for 88 sex crimes including 2 counts of murder and 2 counts of sexual assault. After each of these crimes, he photographed himself in his victims’ underwear and bras.

Does (1.), (2.), and (3.) change because the male identifies as a “woman”, cross dresses, or says he is transgender? No, it does not. Keep in mind that this study only looked at males who underwent SRS. The vast majority of transgender males never undergo SRS.

“Second, regarding any crime, male-to-females had a significantly increased risk for crime compared to female controls (aHR 6.6; 95% CI 4.1–10.8) but not compared to males (aHR 0.8; 95% CI 0.5–1.2). This indicates that they retained a male pattern regarding criminality. The same was true regarding violent crime.”

This is from a conservative website that compiled a list of crimes. As for my political affiliations, I’m so liberal that I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and I’m a lesbian. I was raised Christian, but I’m more of an agnostic. All this information is out there for anyone to dig up, and conservative groups will use Paul (Paula) Witherspoon to bash lesbians and gay men.

This is the text of HERO (Houston Equal Rights Ordinance). I had to look it up, and what Gallus says is true.

“Gender identity means an individual’s innate identification, appearance, expression or behavior as either male or female, although the same may not correspond to the individual’s body or gender as assigned at birth.”

In other words, he can still have his penis and testicles, and it’s all about personal self-identification. Forget the penis. If he says he is a “woman”, then that is good enough for them. Gallus is right in that no documentation of any kind is required.

“WHEREAS, the City of Houston seeks to provide an environment that is free of any type of discrimination based on sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, or pregnancy (“Protected Characteristics”)

Why are they insulting our intelligence? Other than sexual orientation and gender identity, every other group is already protected by state or federal law, and the disabled are protected under ADA. They must think we are all stupid. Notice how they slip “gender identity” in at the end. We know all these other groups of persons are already protected, but it doesn’t matter. Let’s slip in “gender identity” at the end and maybe no one will notice. What is “gender identity”? It’s how people feel at any particular point in time.

“Place of public accommodation means every business with a physical location in the city, whether wholesale or retail, which is open to the general public and offers for compensation any product, service, or facility. The term includes, but is not limited to, all hotels, motels, restaurants, bars, lounges, nightclubs or cabarets where food or beverages are sold or offered for sale,
theaters, washaterias, bowling alleys, skating rinks, golf courses, and other places of public amusement, and all public conveyances, as well as the stations ”

Almost all business open to the public have restrooms, and gyms, health clubs, and spas usually have locker rooms and showers.
Read this again,

“Place of public accommodation means every business with a physical location in the city, whether wholesale or retail, which is open to the general public and offers for compensation any product, service, or facility…and includes, but not is limited to…“.

This encompasses a lot of businesses. Is this some kind of joke, and do they take us as fools? No one is stopping trans folks from walking into a bowling alley or restaurant. How many trans people are screaming, “I can’t go to the bank or theatre”. Is this like Jim Crow where there are special doorways and drinking fountains for trans folks? No one is saying trans folks can’t go where they want when they want. The problem that they cannot get away from is biological males in women’s restrooms and locker rooms. This is what people are bitching about, and will continue to bitch about. Penis in the women’s restroom or locker room is not a civil right. Girls and women have privacy rights, and no one can prove that a male’s “gender identity” is more important than a woman’s right to privacy.

They also cover city services.

Sec. 17-32. Prohibition against discrimination in city services.

“It is the policy of the city that the city will not discriminate on the basis of any protected characteristic in authorizing or making available the use of city facilities or in the delivery of city programs, services or activities.”

What are city facilities? I’m sure they would include restrooms.

If a woman complains about a male in the women’s restroom or locker room, could she be fined $500, or is the business fined. Even if he is in a women’s locker room and “her male genitalia” (see Colleen Francis) is hanging out, girls and women can’t complain. Well, Hell no! This is not acceptable.

Sec. 17-55. Criminal penalties for violation.

(a) A person who violates a provision of this article commits a criminal offense, a Class C misdemeanor. A person is guilty of a separate criminal offense for each day or part of a day during which a violation is committed, continued, or permitted.

(b) A criminal offense under this article is punishable in municipal court by a fine of not less than $250.00 nor more than $500.00.

The HERO definition of sex is confusing.

“Sex means the biological differences between men and women, and gender.”

Biological sex is not the same as “gender”. The human species is sexually dimorphic and all primates reproduce sexually. No primate can change its sex. Rare disorders of sexual development do occur, but this is not the same thing as transgender. Actual intersex medical conditions, as I understand it, could fall under the ADA.

Either biological sex exists or it doesn’t. How can sex be both biological sex and “gender” at the same time?

I argue that erasing the female sex as a distinct class of persons and replacing it with “gender identity” is the most offensive form of sex discrimination.

As a male (straight), I’ve found this blog post on the Houston HERO debacle to have the closest views and analysis to my own of anything I’ve seen in any other media. Also, as a longtime opponent of bigotry and proponent of homosexual/lesbian rights, my attention is grabbed particularly by the argument that linking dubious “transgender” (i.e., transsexual) issues to H/L equality threatens the movement for these very precariously achieved gains — as the HERO disaster demonstrates.

Observations I found especially perceptive…

==
The sticking point for voters was a simple one: The overbroad legal status of “Gender Identity” contains no specific characteristics whatsoever. … The sole characteristic of individuals protected by the legal status of “Gender Identity” is that the individual chooses to claim that legal status, and they can invoke it or discard it at any time or for any reason. … There is no medical requirement or psychiatric diagnosis or evidence of gender nonconformance required. No transgender “transition” (adoption of sex-stereotyped appearance or behavior) is required. Even the protected status of religious faith requires objective characteristics (evidence of duration, participation in religious services). Not so for “Gender Identity”.
==

This is right on target. I’ve been pointing out the same thing in personal conversations (so far, no opportunity until now to find a suitable forum for a richer discussion).

Also…

==
…the public is becoming “educated” about the conflict the transgender movement poses to the rights of women and girls.
==

Liberals are widely baffled about why HERO failed in this supposedly left-leaning, more tolerant city. I think Houston voters did perceive that the “transgender equality” push does pose a conflict with other rights, and a threat in other ways.

Being sort of snuck in under this seemingly “gay rights”-related proposition is this emerging campaign for “gender neutrality”. First of all, let me point out that our species somewhere recently started to lose the attribute of SEX, and to acquire the attribute of nouns and pronouns known as GENDER. But back to the main point … How has a mildly positive and successful momentum for women’s rights and the rights of homosexuals and lesbians somehow become an effort to basically neutralize our sex and sexuality altogether? Because that seems to be precisely where all this is now headed. Along the line, the vast majority of the population once considered “normal” is now being re-classified as “cisgender”…

Finally, the messy issues of locker-rooms and restrooms, especially the latter … Has no one figured the sweeping implications of “gender-neutral” restrooms? This appears, in perhaps most cases, to be a proposal for conversion to nearly universally single-user facilities (to protect the safety and sensibilities of disparate users, particularly female). So free and easy access to multi-user restrooms will be widely replaced with … queues of males and females waiting desperately at the locked doors of single-user facilities? Has nobody considered the capacity impacts of this proposition?

Then there’s the issue of all those men’s rooms with rows of urinals. Are those to be ripped out in favor of single stalls (for either single or multi-user restrooms)? OK, so what will be the reaction of all those businesses and other institutions, small and large, that, since the mandate of ADA back in the early 1990s, have gone to all that trouble and expense to convert their facilities to ADA compliance? And now they’ll be facing a whole new conversion mandate, to “gender neutrality”?

So men will probably lose the convenience of urinals. What will women lose? They’ll lose the amenity of relatively much cleaner toilets (I think most women will understand why) …

And all this to accommodate a tiny, nearly minuscule category of the population that affirms “gender identification” (sex “identification”) problems.

I do believe people have the right to embrace the “sexual identity” they want. I recognize that modern technology facilitates some elements of physical sexual modification. Whether sweeping and unquestioning accommodation to all the desires of this population group is desirable needs a lot more public discussion and perhaps pushback. And the implications of “gender neutrality” need a far more sober assessment.

As I said earlier, this is my first opportunity to discuss this in a public forum. I may be horribly misguided in some notions. In any case, feedback is appreciated…

That may ultimately be the resolution since businesses have to provide a safe and private space for women (lest they lose women as customers), and “trans” access to women’s spaces interferes with our safety and privacy, but the goal of these laws isn’t to create single-use bathrooms that everyone waits for in the same queue. The goal is to allow males into women’s facilities *as they are*, even with the considerable gaps above and below the stalls and the narrow gaps between the doors. The goal is to rob women of safety and privacy to benefit a vanishingly small number of males (even when you include the fetishists who don’t have gender identity “disorder”).

If the trans lobby weren’t led by misogynistic narcissists, they could pass laws requiring businesses to accommodate trans patrons, leaving it up to the businesses on the best way to accommodate — individual bathrooms just for trans patrons, individual bathrooms for everyone, just opening up existing multi-use bathrooms to whoever wants to use them. A law like this would allow businesses flexibility in how to accommodate, and, if the accommodations are too objectionable to half the population (women), businesses could adapt.

But, unfortunately, the trans lobby will settle for nothing less than full validation; validating the gender “identity” of someone who comes across as 100 percent male trumps the basic rights and dignity of women. So I don’t imagine they’ll be willing to compromise until the rest of us push back hard.

Well that’s just it isn’t it. There’s more than one solution to transgender people using the bathroom than just flinging open the women’s washroom doors and letting men stampede in.

That’s the only solution they WANT to entertain, though. Despite the fact that many many establishments have single stall unisex or family restrooms, they still want inside the *women’s bathroom,* risks to women and girls be damned. Even I use family restrooms because I have a weird fear of others hearing me pee or witnessing me poop. That’s right, after years and years of Patriarchal psychological brainwashing, I can’t even afford to be human around OTHER WOMEN. Oh, but I’m PRIVILEGED according to them.

If transactivsts are trigged by my VAGINA, then maybe they should know I’m triggered by their (very male) need to perform bodily functions around me when I’m not even comfortable with my own. (yes, it’s a male thing. Only males are allowed to be human enough to fart and poop)

Women are half the population, but we make up for more than 80% of the buying power in this country. Women do almost all the shopping and I can’t imagine any sensible business person taking the risk of alienating women. Especially since most large shopping venues already have a single user “family” bathroom, and in smaller businesses the toilets are single anyway. As for locker rooms at schools I don’t see them winning that one either. Title IX explicitly says sex NOT gender and I’m pretty sure the Obama administration knows that. Presumably he’s trying to push this to the SCOTUS so he can look good to his wealthy donors.